IN A TWITTER SURVEY OUT OF TEN, NINE PEOPLE OPPOSE THE INTERVIEW TAKEN BY A CHANNEL JOURNALIST ON THE PRECINCTS IF KEDARNATH !

Uttarakhand’s four religious cum spiritual destinations are popular worldwide and people in lakhs throng here every year with this Himalayan state witnessing forty to fifty lakhs foot falls during previous years. Kedarnath, Badrinath, Yamunotri, Gangotri and also Hemkunt Sahib are the prime national religious destinations known worldwide but it has been observed that after, the social media became popular these religious destinations became all the more popular and frequent with foot falls increasing every year barring the Covid 19 times when thousands of families surviving on these portals suffered badly. These religious destinations are considered to be best religious tourism earning handsomely for the state’s exchequer and making the survival of hundreds of petty shopkeepers possible as well. However, politicians have also been frequently coming here for obeisance amd deriving political advantage by way of exhibiting their faith towards Hindu gods and goddess thus allegedly polarising the votes of majority community obviously helping them in garnering their support during elections. The prime minister Narendra Modi has so far visited Kedarnath and Badrinath six times since he assumed power at the centre and has been immensely instrumental in renovating and reconstructing the Kedarnath and Badrinath sites with a handsome budget of thousands of crores of rupees, which had been damaged fully during the June 16-17 ecological disaster when the “Chorabaari Lake” also known as ” GANDHI SAROVAR bursted due to massive rains and cloud bursts leading to massive over flooding of rivers and thousands of people dying including collosal loss of thousands of crores of rupees with hundreds of villages destroyed. After the social media fever rising high and the tourists and pilgrims coming to Kedarnath starting flamboyantly exhibiting their videos creating lot of controversies, the Uttarakhand administration prohibited using of cameras, mobiles and other electronic gadgets at Kedarnath periphery especially after the eruption of two controversies (1) alleged scam in gold plates being fixed inside the garb grah of the historic temple, Kedarnath, donated by a Maharashtra businessman, and another a video of a a girl and her fiancee publicly embracing each other in front of Kedarnath temple going viral in social media few days ago creating immense furore. But what brought the Uttarakhand government under a question mark is that while it has forbidden clicking of pictures, recording videos by mobiles and cameras in the Kedarnath precincts after these controversies , it hypocritically allowed the leading journalist of a national channel Sudhir Choudhary to openly interview a saint on the temple premises with cameras clicking pictures and recording the video in open contravention of the state government’s rules imposed by it earlier clearing the precinct of the pilgrims. This double standard procedure and alleged open arbitrary favour to a particular new channel of AAJ TAK was opposed by people at the pan India, level, especially in Uttarakhand. The people say that how can the rules be allowed to bent for a particular channel when the general public is not supposed to click pictures or take videos st Kedarnath precinct as per the newly imposed rules of the Uttarakhand administration. Though, the show for which this interview of Murari Baby was recorded at Kedarnath few days ago may have been lauded and TRP of a particular channel enhanced, the point is why were the rules violated for Sudhir Choudhary and AAJ TAK for their show. Can there be two laws question the people of Uttarakhand. According to the founder of SDC and renowned social activist of Uttarakhand Anoop Nautiyal , the Shri Badri Kedarnath Temple Committee ( BKTC ) has banned photo/ videos in # Kedarnath. But @sudhirchaudhay@aajtak recently did interview with the holy temple as background. Should such interviews be allowed? If yes why, If no what are the reasons. This survey was conducted by Anoop Nautiyal on Twitter. To everyone’s surprise there were 2.414 views to this tweet and merely 14% said yes whereas 86% people were against it.

Anoop Nautiyal has while sharing this opinion poll of Twitter said that he hopes that this result, opposing such interviews in the precinct of Kedarnath etc will not be allowed in future and the Badrinath Kedarnath Mandir Samittee after taking suo moto of such interviews stops them in future. He adds that such intervention against rules should not be allowed to happen in the near future in four religious destinations of Uttarakhand especially after formulation of rules and regulations by the state government as nobody is above law. What’s your take friends.